Panel discussion on the role of municipalities in promoting circularity and more sustainable consumption patterns in the fashion sector.
Sustainable fashion is often regarded as an issue of international trade and global issues, disregarding the role of local municipalities in the phenomena of overproduction and overconsumption and their trickle-down effects. Yet many cities around the world have started to think of this challenge and develop innovative mechanisms to reduce the volume of production and overconsumption and support their city’s fashion sector’s transition to sustainability. How can municipalities reduce waste, induce sustainable consumption behaviours in their citizens and promote sustainable choices, and circular business services? Do municipalities that are at the receiving end of fast fashion initiate policies and initiatives to re-address the phenomenon? Can cities impact the fashion industry by changing consumption patterns of their citizens?
UN ALLIANCE WEBINAR February 5th, 2024 14:00 – 17:00 CET
Opening remarks Simone Cipriani, Chairperson, UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion & Chief Technical Advisor, Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI/ITC)
Introduction Katia Dayan Vladimirova, PhD, Senior lecturer and researcher, University of Geneva
City Cases (10 min each) AMSTERDAM: Dieuwertje de Wagenaar, Senior Policy Officer Circular Textiles, City of Amsterdam. Fashion and textiles in the “Amsterdam Doughnut”: How policy can boost local circular ecosystems. OSLO: Kirsi Laitala, Senior researcher, Oslo Metropolitan University. Key challenges of textile waste and city-level solutions: Case of Oslo. ACCRA: Elizabeth Rickett, Co-founder, The Or Foundation. Textile overwhelm: How Accra City is managing the growing volumes of imported second hand garments and the resulting textile waste through circular practices. GENEVA: Katia Dayan Vladimirova, PhD, Senior lecturer and researcher, University of Geneva. Opportunities to support responsible local fashion consumption: Case of the City of Geneva. CAPE TOWN: Alison Evans, Head: Waste Markets, City of Cape Town. Moving towards circular textiles through Cape Town partnerships. The case of the city of NEW YORK will also be featured.
Discussants (5 min each) Felicity Lammas, Sustainability Manager, Global Fashion Agenda Mohammad Awale, Founder, Rummage Josephine Philips, Founder and CEO, Sojo Matt Dwyer, Product Impact and Innovation Leader, Patagonia Enrica Arena, CEO, Orange Fiber Åsa Degerman, Manager, Once More Q&A
Conclusions ● Gulnara Roll, Head of the Cities Unit, UNEP Moderation ● Paola Deda, Director, Forests, Land and Housing Division, UNECE
This is an event of the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion; organized by ITC Ethical Fashion Initiative, UNECE, UNEP, ICLEI and the University of Geneva.
My practice-based PhD titled “Enduring Fashion: Building Sustainable Clothing Practices Through Wearer-Garment Relationships”, uses art and design practice to explore people’s relationships with their clothes. The aim of the study is to investigate how these wearer-garment relationships might be leveraged to reduce the mass over-consumption and under-use that are currently prevalent in fashion.
The work is being guided by the following research questions:
How often do people acquire and discard clothes, how many clothes do they own and how frequently are they used?
What existing relationships do people have with their clothes?
Can people be encouraged to develop an enduring relationship with their clothes?
How do wearer-garment relationships impact clothing longevity and consumption?
Context
Fashion’s impact on people and planet has been known for the last three decades, but we seem to have become immune to the scale of our actions even when presented with the evidence and if anything things are getting worse, not better (Coscieme et al., 2022). It is clear that a change in approach is needed towards something more hopeful, relatable and empowering (UNEP, 2023).
Sustainability in fashion is reliant on individual behaviour and there is little point in designing a low impact, durable, recyclable garment if nobody wants to wear, keep and love it. This connection and relationship between people and clothes, which motivates the want to wear, keep and love is at the core of my work and I believe could be key to driving sustainable clothing practices.
I am inspired by the work of Richardson et al. (2015) on Nature Connectedness to inform my ideas about interactions with, and connections to, clothing and am using data visualization techniques to incorporate this into my creative practice. My work is grounded in a grass-roots approach to sustainability in fashion described by Alice Payne as “rewilding” (Payne, 2019), and a particular influence on my approach is Amy Twigger Holroyd’s Fashion Fictions research project that offered participants the chance to speculate on new social and cultural norms in clothing practices through deep material engagements with clothes.
Method
I am at the start of my research: one third into a part-time programme of study so the ‘method-in-progress’ I will describe has so far only been practiced on myself.
The Wardrobe Audit has been used successfully in academic research and described in detail in the original Opening Up the Wardrobe book. This practice is beginning to be adopted by the wider public, perhaps thanks to recent developments in AI and the growing use of self-tracking in all aspects of our lives leading to a growing interest in wardrobe logging and tracking apps. In my work I explore the possibilities of using a more analogue and creative approach to the Wardrobe Audit.
Wardrobe Audit Visualisation. Photo: Wendy Ward
I began by auditing my own wardrobe and recording the results on a spreadsheet.
I found that the Information on a spreadsheet was too easy to ignore (especially when involved in daily clothing rituals of getting dressed and acquiring/disposing of clothes). I decided to represent the data in my spreadsheet in a more visual, but abstract way using needle and thread directly onto a garment. The resulting data visualization is a surface decoration which appears abstract to viewers and whose true meaning is known only to me.
I update my original audit at the end of each season and create a fresh visualization of the data. This led me to develop a similar method for logging and tracking my ongoing daily wearing habits. This method involves adding a stitch to garments from my wardrobe on each day that they are worn. Over time stitches gather on well-worn garments and are absent or minimal on less or never worn garments, resulting in a very visible and tangible way for me to confront my daily wearing habits over time.
My study has been ethically approved and I am currently recruiting participants for the collaborative phase. Informed by recent reports from WRAP and the Hot or Cool Institute identifying which demographic has the biggest impact on the planet in terms of fashion consumption, I am targeting the top 20% of earners in the UK who shop for clothes more than once a month.
As my study is practice-based and qualitative in nature, all data produced will be analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
Early Insights
A strong sense of ritual and mindfulness is emerging from these tracking and auditing practices that I have now incorporated into my daily life. I am more aware of the extent of my wardrobe and how I use it (or not) and I am much more mindful of acquiring new clothes and how to discard those I no longer want to keep.
In early experimental workshops with volunteers while developing my method it emerged that experiential/sensory ways of researching clothing can expose gaps in existing knowledge. One such example is knowing what to do with clothing considered unfit for donation to charity; some of the volunteers I worked with had resorted to putting these clothes into the general waste bin (which in the UK is destined only for either landfill or incineration).
I hope that the results from my PhD can contribute towards improving the communication of the need for behaviour change around fashion consumption and clothing use, and ultimately provide some new tools for citizens to reassess the value of their clothing.
References:
Coscieme, L., Akenji, L., Latva-Hakuni, E., Vladimirova, K., Niinimäki, K., Henninger, C., Joyner-Martinez, C., Nielsen, K., Iran, S. and D ́Itria, E. (2022). Unfit, Unfair, Unfashionable: Resizing Fashion for a Fair Consumption Space. Hot or Cool Institute, Berlin.
Payne, A. (2019). Fashion Futuring in the Anthropocene: Sustainable Fashion as “Taming” and “Rewilding”. Fashion Theory, 23:1. 5-23.
Richardson, M., Hallam, J. & Lumber, R. (2015). One Thousand Good Things in Nature: Aspects of Nearby Nature Associated with Improved Connection to Nature. Environmental Values, 24(5), 603–619.
Twigger Holroyd, A. (n.d.). About. Retrieved January 10, 2024, from https://fashionfictions.org/about/
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), & United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2023). The Sustainable Fashion Communication Playbook – Shifting the narrative: A Guide to Aligning Fashion Communication to the 1.5-Degree Climate Target and Wider Sustainability Goals. https://wedocs.unep.org/20.500.11822/42819.
The main point made during EcoAge and MEP Alessandra Moretti’s joint event in the EU Parliament was to link the increased plastification in the fashion sector with social injustice upstream and downstream in the value-chain.
Livia Firth, founder of EcoAge and moderator of Fashionscapes for Transformation, has relentlessly these last months hammered in the point that these are two sides of the same problem at several high-profile events, namely the massive overproduction of apparel. No less for the second time in the EU Parliament.
The mix of speakers and participants was impressive, with representatives both old and young, from industry and research, as well as political heavy-weights, and voices both from the Global South and North. The voices heard during the event were diverse, but unison in their messaging: The massive overproduction, based on cheap synthetics, cannot continue. This has even sunk in with the policy-makers, who echoed the same concerns in well-prepared speeches, in line with Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius key-note, stating “fast fashion must become past fashion”.
SIFO’s Ingun Grimstad Klepp, who had been – together with Irene Maldini – a speaker at the last EcoAge event in the Parliament, had no official role in Fashionscapes; however, Livia Firth asked her intervention after the panel had presented and discussed multiple aspects related to social issues missing from the Textile Strategy, and what instruments could encourage deplastifying. The much-repeated idea that quality or durability are the silver-bullet that will instantly degrow the sector was, however, debunked by Klepp. But before getting to this, let us dive into the proceedings.
MEP Beatrice Covassi in the foreground. Right before Ingun Klepp (seated to her right behind) was asked to intervene.
It was to be sure, an intense two-hour wake-up call, related to EU’s Textile strategy and Green Transition. MEP Alessandra Moretti, as hostess of the event and key note speaker Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius both high-lighted how ambitious these plans are, and had many good points in what they brought forward. Where disagreement surfaced, was around fiber-to-fiber recycling of synthetics – presented as a potential for a thriving new European industrial bonanza. As several pointed out, this will only increase the use of synthetics, continue to bring down prices and result in even more microplastics. As China produces 95% of today’s synthetics, why should they sit back and see Europe take over the market? That is not how market economics work. This is a blind alley, or as we say in Norwegian ‘believing in Santa Claus’, as several in the audience reiterated.
The main theme was divesting the fashion industry of its fossil fuel reliance, of course also in the fiber area, with waste colonialism and degradation of nature in the global south to satisfy the constant craving for newness in the global north, resulting in massive overproduction. This is of course based on fossil fuel input, but as just pointed at, recycling the same material is not the answer.
Livia Firth, MEP Alessandra Moretti, Commisioner Virginijus Sinkevičius, Simon Giuliani from Candiani Denim and CEO Laurence Tubiana, European Climate Foundation (ECF).
“This shows how the issues cannot be dealt with in isolation, but we need to look at them more holistically than is currently done in the 16 (or more) legislative pieces forthcoming from the EU,” was echoed by several participants after the meeting.
Laurence Tubiana, CEO of European Climate Foundation, who was the last speaker on the panel, claimed she was rather shocked that social issues are not better integrated into the Textile strategy where 80% of the work-force, we were told, is female and does not receive a living wage. However, these workers are also the ones facing the brunt of climate change, toxic chemicals in the soils and waterways, alongside being at the receiving end of our textile waste.
“Children in Ghana grow up not knowing what the ground looks like, as it covered with a permanent layer of textile waste,” Matteo Ward, Co-Founder of Wrad Living, told the audience. He was echoed by Yayra Aghofah, Founder of The Revival in Ghana who pointed out that they have to pay for this same waste that pollutes their environment and that will eventually end up as microplastics. This sad fate, several came back to.
MEP Beatrice Covassi immediately followed up Ingun Klepp’s intervention, requested by Livia Firth, Yayra Aghofah, founder of The Revival, online, in the background.
Black Friday was also a theme, as Yayra Aghofah suggested that they would be inundated with the results of this frenzy very soon, so action is needed now, not in 2026 or 2030. This, of course, underpins the need of immediately labelling season and year products go to market, so that Duration of Service can be captured when the items go into the diverse waste streams. Panelist Paola Migliorini from DG Environment claimed the EU “is helpless in regulating Black Friday”; ignoring that there are ways to legislate or counter-act such market forces with so obviously devastating outcomes. However, it was positive that overproduction had such a central place in the proceedings, both related to how they tie in with the plastification of fashion and with waste colonialism.
Three from the audience were asked to intervene at the end, the first was Urska Trunk from Changing Markets Foundation, talking about the source for polyester for several fashion companies is still Russian oil.
Ingun Klepp, MEP Alessandra Moretti, and to the far right MEP Beatrice Covassi. The woman in the middle of th MEP-bouquet we haven’t yet identified…
Then Ingun Klepp was asked to comment on ‘quality’, and she explained how the only information consumers receive is price, and this isn’t necessarily directly related to quality. She then went on to say that with the EU’s strategy focusing on durability, plastics will win. This in light of the reality that people do not discard textiles because they are ‘used up’, and this is the problem facing the Global South and receivers such as The Revival. Especially as there is more and more polyester, and will be more, and these materials, when exported to the Global South rather than incinerated, will eventually end up as microplastics.
This was immediately picked up by MEP Beatrice Covassi, who clearly was frustrated with the fact that the consumer has so little information about the products available and thus struggles to make good choices, and wanted to applaud professor Klepp’s input.
The last person, who was asked to comment, was Nicholas Rochat, Founder of the plastic-free sportsbrand Mover, who said that with more recycled polyester – even fiber to fiber – will only contribute to more microplastics. He described being in the mountains at 2000 meters, and still encountering microplastics, and no longer being able to eat fish, as they are contaminated.
But the main take-away was that the Commission seems to have a belief that all the 16 plus different policy instruments will ‘even everything out’, but the reality is that they are in danger of making things worse in tandem, actually promoting synthetics, if the focus on durability continues alongside eco-modulating fees based on weight.
As the participants filed out, one of them sidled over to Klepp and said, simply: “Norway, douze points”.
Author: Anna Schytte Sigaard, PhD Student, Consumption Research Norway (SIFO), Oslo Metropolitan University.
Aims and objectives
The wardrobe studies method has been a central part of my PhD project entitled “Want Not, Waste Not: A wardrobe study approach to minimizing textile waste from Norwegian households”. The aim of the project is to create knowledge about the disposal part of the consumption phase of textiles in Norwegian households by collecting and analyzing textiles going out of use to find out how and why people get rid of clothing and other textiles and what they get rid of. A comprehensive mapping of disposed textiles has been carried out to gain knowledge about the technical composition and history of the individual textile. The topic has been explored through the following research questions:
What do discarded textiles from Norwegian households consist of?
How and why are textiles disposed of from the households?
What value do people attach to their used textiles, and how does this affect disposal?
The theoretical framework is based on practice theory which has been used as a point of departure for carrying out wardrobe studies as a research method, and for understanding and analyzing data from fieldwork.
Context
The issue of textile disposal holds significant environmental implications, as waste creation poses a major challenge within the textile and clothing industry. Existing perspectives commonly attribute waste creation to production inefficiencies or place responsibility solely on the consumer. However, these perspectives fail to acknowledge the interconnectedness of the various processes and practices that constitute everyday life. Disposal should not be regarded as an undesirable byproduct, but rather as a crucial and integral part of the consumption process, encompassing social, ethical, and performative aspects. In the context of textiles, understanding consumers’ disposal behavior becomes essential, as they hold the power to determine how and when textiles are discarded. This directly impacts the lifespan of textiles, the amount of waste generated, as well as the potential for reuse and recycling. In my project, disposal refers to the act of getting rid of something regardless of whether it is discarded as waste, delivered to recycling, donated to clothing collectors, given to friends or family, etc. An important contribution of this project is to deepen the understanding of an important, yet neglected area of consumption research, namely why we get rid of the things we no longer want.
Method
The data material in this project consists of wardrobe interviews, fieldnotes and textile registrations. In total, 82 interviews were carried out with 28 households from three parts of Norway: Oslo (11), Vestfold (9) and Salten (8). A total of 73 people of different ages participated in the project. The households were recruited strategically with the intention of obtaining a diverse group of participants to cover as wide a range of perspectives as possible. Therefore, participants of different ages and genders living in both urban and rural areas have been included as well as different types of dwellings. Residing in a bigger or smaller residence affects how much can be stored which may decrease or increase the number of textiles leaving the household. Data collection was carried out during one year starting from October 2021 and ending in October 2022 and comprised a six month participation period for each participant.
A start-up interview lasting maximum one hour was carried out with each household at the beginning of the participation period. The following six months, participants collected all textile items that would have otherwise left the households. Textile items included everything made of fabric such as clothing and shoes, household textiles such as linen, towels, cloths, and equipment such as bags, packaging, and toys. Larger furniture and textile installations, such as fixed carpets, were excluded. After three and six months, at-home wardrobe studies interviews were carried out. The duration of these interviews depended on how much had been collected by the participants and lasted anywhere between 20 minutes and up to three hours. Interviews were centered around the textile items collected by the participants and usually took place in the living room, kitchen, or on the porch in the participants home. We would look at, touch, and sometimes smell each item individually and lay them out on a table or the ground in front of us while the participants answered questions about how long they had had the item, how much they had used it, how they had used it, if they had made any repairs or alterations, how they acquired it, and why they were disposing of it.
A total of 3556 pieces were collected. The textile items were tagged with a letter reference to the household it came from and number (for example A1, A2, A3 etc.) during the interviews in the order in which they were brought up by the participant. After the interview, all textile items were brought back for analysis and information about each piece was registered in Excel together with information from the interviews. The following information was registered for each piece individually (when available): type of textile, weight, brand, color, print, fiber content, number of fibers, construction, recommended wash temperature, ecolabelling, general condition, holes, broken seam, color change, shrinkage/shape change, pilling, felting, and repairs/alterations. In addition, each textile item was photographed after registration.
Stories from wardrobe interviews
Wardrobe interviews were based on what the participants had collected and differed therefore in length as well as content. Below are three examples from interviews of how centering the conversation around the physical items provide meaningful and interesting narratives and insights. Quotes have been translated from Norwegian.
Maria, 38 Item: kitchen towel and microfiber cloth (see image)
“I can’t get rid of the smell on them. This is an old kitchen towel from my grandmother. I took it when she passed away 15 years ago but it has become a little worn. I have used it a lot before, but I got some new ones for Christmas. [The cloth] doesn’t work so well anymore. It doesn’t absorb anything. I have had it a long time, probably for many years, so it’s old. I have used it quite a bit. Now I just want to get rid of it. It smells!”
Maria insisted that I did not bring the cloth back with me for registrations since it was so dirty and smelly. Instead, she threw it into the bin in her kitchen before we continued the interview.
The dirty kitchen rag. Photo: Anna Schytte Sigaard
Freda, 65 Item: sweatpants
“And then the cozy pants go. They have been used quite a bit, but I hate them. I think it’s absolutely terrible to walk around in them and I just don’t want them anymore. I broke my back 13 years ago and I had problems moving and putting on clothes so I asked my husband to go buy a pair of sweatpants because I didn’t have any, I’m not a sweatpants person, but I had to have something that I could just pull up, so he bought them for me. It’s nice to wear something like that to relax, so I have used it but not that much. It has been [visibly] washed and used after all. They were bought for medical reasons and I’m getting rid of them for medical reasons. I have to have pants where I can feel if I’m getting fat and you don’t in those kinds.”
Kasper, 33 Item: pants
“They are all worn out. You can almost see through them, so I’m not allowed to use them anymore. They have simply expired. And they have also ripped in the bottom. I have used them a lot, I managed to use them for at least two years, but they have been lying around for a while now. But I used them almost daily. They are very comfortable. I have really worn it to pieces. It was my gaming pants so it has been sat in a lot. I also used it for working out in the beginning. That was okay as well, just a little warm.»
Results
The project is still ongoing, but some preliminary results based on the quantitative data material have already been identified:
Most of the collected textiles were clothing and shoes (see graph below).
The largest category of collected clothing in percentage of number was children’s clothing followed by sock. When looking at percentage of weight, however, the largest category was bottoms (jeans, shorts, skirts etc.) and thin tops.
Almost a third (32%) of the collected were in very good condition (like new or with only minor changes) (see graph).
The most common damage was pilling followed by holes, color change, stains and shrinkage. The least common were broken seams and broken parts.
More results are available in the report “Want not, waste not: Preliminary findings” (see link below). Moving forward, the qualitative interview data will be analyzed. I will be looking into why clothing and textiles that are not broken or damages have been disposed of by focusing on the practices were consumption of clothing and textiles form an integral part.
Percentages for clothing and shoes (81%), household textiles (11%), other (8%)Condition of items analyzed, from not usable (15%) up to “like new” (8%).
Insights
The contribution of wardrobe studies in the effort to minimize textile waste, is to create an understanding of the relationship between the individual textile item and the larger material context. As it includes the technical characteristics of the textiles along with knowledge about the owner’s social life including the practices involved, the method creates an understanding with a specific focus on the material element of social practices. In this way, it deals with the interconnectedness between how something is talked about and the material item itself. The purpose of including the physical element into the interview situation is to tap into the participants’ sensory relationship with the items. The aim of having participants engage physically with the items was to elicit memories about acquisition and use through the sensory elements which is difficult to obtain through the typical conversational interviews.
Publications from project
Sigaard, A. S. (2023). Want Not, Waste Not: Preliminary findings. Retrieve here. Sigaard, A. S., & Laitala, K. (2023). Natural and sustainable? Consumers’ textile fiber preferences. Fibers, 11(2). Retrieve here.
Wardrobe studies have formed an integral part of my PhD research entitled Sensory Nourishment. I collaborate with people who are neurodivergent: people on the autism spectrum, people with ADHD, people who experience the sensations in our environments at amplified, and often unbearable levels. This can have a profound impact on their well-being, disabling their interactions with the world around them. As a fashion designer I am concerned with the sensory inputs from our closest environment, our clothing. My objective with the wardrobe studies has been to identify neurodivergent individuals’ clothing triggers and glimmers.
Background
One participant described her body as “being too porous so too many of the wrong sensations get through. This leads to sensory overwhelm which is exhausting to process and very distressing for my body” (Anna, 36). The author Katherine May, who herself is on the autism spectrum, writes about sensations “that scream so loud that you want to retreat”. And how she “inhabit(s) a body that simply stops responding when it reaches its point of overwhelm.” (May, 2018) On the flipside, another informant explained that “with heightened sensitivities, the reward is high. When the sensory input is right, it is wonderful!” (Eva, 55).
Context
My adoption of a wardrobe methodology was inspired by an encounter I had with Herman, an autistic teenage boy. When visiting his home, I laid out the early prototypes for a knitted textile I was developing. He screwed up his face and pushed them away. He left the room. Sometime later Herman returned with his mother’s cashmere sweater. His eyes lit up as he pressed it against his cheek. He placed the sweater in my hands and said, “I want it to feel like this”. I visited Herman several times and we developed a very fluid dialogue through tangible objects that he would collect for me to feel. This encounter completely shifted my way of working as a designer. Rather than projecting my solutions onto a user, I saw the importance of being guided by their lived experiences and learning through the objects they surround themselves with in order to live well.
Wardrobe study in a home Photographer: Anders Myklebust
Recruitment
Over the last two years I have interviewed a further 70 neurodivergent informants. For some it is simply a quick chat. For others it has been a series of intensive meetings spanning a couple of years; our collaborative dialogue and articulation of sensory experiences sharpening with each rendezvous. The informants range from non-verbal children to active teenagers, to young professionals, to a factory worker and a diplomat in their 60s. They are all in mainstream education or full-time employment. The wardrobes I examine are situated mainly in Northern Europe: physically, culturally, and climatically.
Adaptation of methodology
I use the term wardrobe both literally and metaphorically (Klepp & Bjerck, 2014). My intention was to visit each participant’s physical wardrobe in their home. For most participants that has been the case. However, for some it felt too intimate. So, they packed up the contents of their wardrobes into shopping bags and brought them to nearby cafes. For a few, the loud background sounds of a cafe were too overwhelming, so they let me rummage through their drawers in the privacy of their work offices. I embraced every opportunity for a wardrobe study, even unpacking the contents of someone’s suitcase at a conference. Covid-19 restrictions meant that sometimes there was a computer screen partitioning me from the wardrobe. The adaptability of the wardrobe methodology was key, in particular with participants who are non-verbal or have communication challenges. The red thread through each adaptation was a sensory ethnographic approach that was “not so much to study other people’s sensory values and behaviours, but to collaborate with them to explore and identify these.” (Pink, 2009)
Stories from meetings with wardrobes
Stine, 26, Researcher Study Location: Community project & her home
Stine anticipated some knee and hip flexing as we shovelled the ground so some stretch in the trousers was essential. She also anticipated that the ground might be abrasive. Toughness was therefore an equally important characteristic to ease of movement. She had settled on a pair of jeans with a little elastic content. However, she now regretted that decision as the hardware from the waistband was digging into her abdomen as she loaded stones from the ground into a wheelbarrow. Her trousers restricted this bending action by tightening the fabric across her obliques. This particular sensation is a daily obstacle for Stine. It can become so overwhelming that she cannot concentrate on anything else. Over several meet-ups, in Stine’s home, we refined the description of this sensation as akin to that of a stranger slowly sliding their hand around your waist. The sensation approaches from behind. You can’t quite process it until it’s too late. Physically you feel restricted. Emotionally you feel violated. Socially you don’t want to cause a scene.
Left: Stine climbing trees in her jeans Right: Laila choreographing with her snowsuit Photographer: Anders Myklebust
Laila, 4, Barnehagebarn (Kindergarten-kid) Study Location: Her parent’s apartment
As Laila’s mother led me inside, Laila started to scream and cry. She lay down on the floor, clinging on with determination. Growing tired, Laila wandered off. Her mother nudged my gaze towards the porch. Laila pulled the snowsuit up over her legs and let it rest at her waist. She put her right arm inside a padded sleeve, and then her left. She shrugged it up over her shoulders. Ever so slowly and with great attention she pulled up the zipper with her tiny hands. She then pulled the hood over her head and sighed. As she blocked out the room the crying stopped, the incessant movement subsided, the screaming ceased. Then Laila reversed these actions. The snowsuit was around her ankles once again. She repeated the dressing actions. Then the undressing. Again, again and again.
Tom, 38, Innovation Manager Study Location: Many cafés
Given the snowstorm outside, it was quite peculiar to be greeted by a bottle of sunscreen placed in the middle of our table. Tom explained that he thought it would be helpful to begin with an abstract of sorts, an executive summary of his sensory dislikes. These were embodied in the bottle of sunscreen: perfumed smell, coldness, slimy texture, someone else must touch you to put it on your back. From under the table, Tom pulled out his comfort shirt from a shopping bag. He let me take it home so I could live with it. Its synthetic fibres and overlocked seams contradicted every other participant’s preference so far. The others exclusively wore natural fibres, covered up thick seams and cut out every label.
Some weeks later, Tom and I met so I could return the shirt. He had kept notes on a new tweed blazer he had bought. Standing in front of the mirror in the store, he had concluded that it fitted his body perfectly. Across the back there was an ease of movement, and the cut was flattering. It projected the confidence of the character he wanted to inhabit at Monday’s presentation. However, on Monday morning, the blazer inhabited him. Tom is very animated with his arms as he presents. The blazer was catching on the top of his inner arm. A catching that restricted him physically and distracted him mentally. This catching made a sound. The longer he wore the jacket the smell of the fabric became more potent. “I couldn’t find a way to decode the experience, it was eating me up, it was almost animalistic, like an animal on my back with the sound and the smell and the restriction to my arms.”
Tom’s sunscreen and comfort shirt Photographer: Anders Myklebust
Examples of insights
Cheap construction, as a result of fast fashion, is one of the main culprits for sensory overwhelm: synthetic fibres, roughly overlocked seams, careless labelling, restrictive cuts.
Natural fibres are overwhelmingly preferred because of tactility, smell, sound, and thermal regulation. However, tactile perception, preferences and vernacular vary between participants. For some cashmere is a “soft” fabric. For others cashmere has small hairy fibres that cling to the skin. Such participants describe a smooth shirting cotton as “soft”.
Dominant fashion design practices are traditionally visual and static in their conception of clothing (Skjold, 2018). The wardrobe studies allowed me to see clothing as an act of dressing, a practice of wearing, a series of dynamic actions. This has shifted the moving body to the forefront of my design process.
The potential for movement facilitates a physical freedom that is inextricably linked to emotional freedom: freedom of choice, freedom from judgement, freedom to move through the day free from distractions and restrictions.
Comfort is more than simply soft materials or a lack of constraint. It is being able to comfort yourself at times of great discomfort. It is being comfortable with how you are socially presented: “the embedded meanings so implied, can be a source of ease and calm – or its reverse.” (Twigg, 2010)
Clothing has the potential to activate pleasant sensory stimulation that overrides or dampens problematic sensory inputs from other sources.
Outcomes
The analysis of these wardrobe studies will be published in my PhD monograph (anticipated in 2024). A second component to my PhD is the translation of this analysis into my design practice. Currently I am working with three participants to create a garment each by designing out the depleting sensory inputs and indulging the sensations that nourish. The anticipated result is a series of iterative prototypes whose contribution is less about the final product and more about a way of working. Ethnography is no longer confined to defining design needs. I am now integrating applied ethnography within my design process.
The project has also received innovation funding from NTNU Discovery with the ambition of embedding the wardrobe study insights within the fashion industry by advising companies on more considered approaches to how we craft sensory experiences in terms of design, manufacturing, and shopping.
References
Klepp, I.G. and Bjerck, M. (2014) A Methodological Approach to the Materiality of Clothing: Wardrobe Studies. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 17(4), pp. 373-386.
May, K. (2018) The Electricity of Every Living Thing. London: Trapeze.
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Annebella Pollen, Professor of Visual and Material Culture, University of Brighton, UK
In 2019, I shadowed an English house clearance company who clear unwanted goods from homes to observe what happens to clothes at the end of a life, to understand commercial decisions about clothes’ value, and to follow garments’ afterlives. The company followed has a business model typical of the sector. Across a week, clothes are moved out of wardrobes, into the secondhand market, where they move through declining scales of value until they are given away for free. At the end of the process, unwanted garments are incinerated. This practice offers a microcosm of textile turnover; following each stage sheds light on how cultural and financial value is constructed, and how waste is classified and produced.
The study followed a single company on a single job relating to a single person (a recently deceased widowed woman in her eighties). Using a social biography method – considering commodities as persons with social and cultural lives (Kopytoff 1986) – I followed the contents of this woman’s wardrobe, as her garments moved through sequential stages. To interpret the clothes and the process, I utilised a material culture methodology that foregrounds the things with which the social and cultural world is populated and with which it communicates. Objects’ movements, meanings and status shifts are shaped by their materiality; what they are made of and how they are made, by whom, matters.
I considered ‘the wardrobe’ not only as an assemblage of clothing but as a container of meaning and as a mobile site through which clothing flows. Gregson and Beale (2004) demonstrate the utility of social biographical approaches in garments’ existences and afterlives when they reflect on the mobilities of accumulation and divestment. “Clothes circulate”, they argue. “They have lives with their initial possessors and lives which may exceed them.” Woodward (2007) argues that worn clothing not only narrates the lives of its wearers in its use and disposal but, by extension, that individual garments can be read as material archives or indexes; together they form a body of biographical material.
The dressing gown, 2019. Photo: Annebella Pollen
The study was underpinned by empirical observation of disposal and dispersal at three key points—the cleared house, the waste processing site, and the reselling location — and by interviews with those who make choices about what to keep and what to trade, as well as with those who buy it and sell it on. All involved – wearers, sellers, users and destroyers – were anonymised.
Findings
The clothes were mostly daily wear designed for comfort, bought new from middle-market British high street locations, particularly Bonmarché. I researched Bonmarché business practices, particularly its connection to the Rana Plaza garment factory that collapsed to devastating effect in 2013 in Bangladesh, killing 1,134 people and injuring 2,500 more. I thus traced garments from their production site – wherever labour is cheapest – to their life in a British woman’s wardrobe, then back into the secondhand market, where they may be bought and used locally, or be picked up by low-paid migrant workers who ship garments back to the Global South.
The central garment case study was a stained polyester dressing gown. This was among the intimate wardrobe items selected by house clearers for waste processing; it did not even enter the secondhand circuit. As the clearer told me, it is more work to pack and unload such material, only to reload and dump it at the end of the market, than to dump in advance. I consequently examined garments whose meanings cannot be revalued in secondhand cultures of vintage shopping, typically bedwear, underwear and clothes associated with illness and death. I also scrutinised the dressing gown’s material, as a plastic polymer fibre garment whose deterioration is not marked by the wasted aesthetic effects of denim or leather, and which is not associated with garment recycling’s fashionable and pleasurable performances. As Stanes and Gibson (2017) observe, of artificial fibres in the recycling economy, “polyester’s materiality—its very plasticity— unleashes an unsettling set of contradictory relations” in its Western users and re-users, including discomfort, disgust, sweatiness and neglect. As such, polyester garments have become the overlooked stuff of fashion waste.
Implications
My study contributes new perspectives on the little-researched house clearance industry. While part of a wider secondhand practices that have been thoroughly documented, house clearances are particular. They can be unregulated operators at the bottom end of the secondhand chain, intersecting the antiques trade, refuse disposal and the death industry. Their operations may be opaque, but they are often the first brokers of goods as they move from first-hand usage to second-hand repurposing or disposal. The decisions clearers make about the value of clothing have fundamental effects on its later direction and meaning. The study also scrutinised garments that are not usually examined. Stained polyester bedwear is not a treasured item with vintage value; it lacks romantic patina. I argue, however, that is important to examine what is culturally unwanted. Together, my microcosmic study pays attention to bigger processes that are overlooked, whether for discretion, trade secrecy, or to hide the unpalatable truths of the global inequalities that sit beneath first world fashion pleasures.
The waste disposal site, 2019. Photo: Annebella Pollen
The research was firstly shared at a 2019 Design History Society conference panel dedicated to understanding fashion practices beyond mainstream systems of financial value. It was adapted for the 2021 conference and 2022 JOMEC journal special issue on Secondhand Cultures in Unsettled Times. It has been used to provide wider context for the artistic practices of Lloyd Corporation, an artist duo who examine the cultural movement of goods outside the mainstream. This has taken the form of a talk accompanying a 2022 exhibition at Centre for Contemporary Art, Brighton, and a commissioned catalogue essay, ‘The Social Life of Unwanted Clothes’, for the exhibition’s reiteration at Carlos/Ishikawa gallery, London (‘Today’s Gift is Tomorrow’s Commodity. Yesterday’s Commodity is Tomorrow’s Found Art Object. Today’s Art Object is Tomorrow’s Junk. And Yesterday’s Junk is Tomorrow’s Heirloom’). Finally, it formed a contribution to the 2022-23 workshops, ‘Overcoming Secondhand Challenges’, organised at University of Cardiff, which brought together academics and secondhand stakeholders to consider ways to reduce waste, strengthen systems of repair, and build community in the sector.
Wardrobe and Climate was the over-arching theme for a CHANGE event at the Norwegian Folk Museum in Oslo: how we can convey historical knowledge about resource thinking, crafts and wardrobe joy in the museum’s costume collections. An academic hybrid conference morphed into a hands-on evening.
“How did they do it?” was the big question posed during the hybrid seminar during the day, where around 25 attended in person and the same number joined us virtually; and where Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Ingrid Haugsrud, both from Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) at Oslo Metropolitan University, spoke about two forthcoming papers. These are: Variety in dress: Norwegian and Swedish clothing 1780-1880, co-authored by Bjørn Sverre Hol Haugen, Marie Ulväng, Pernilla Rasmussen, Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Ingrid Haugsrud, and Towards a closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear: Wardrobe planning regimes in women’s weekly magazines 1908-2023.Here the authors are Ingrid Haugsrud, Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Vilde Haugrønning.
Ingrid Haugsrud presented findings from Norway’s oldest women’s magazine.
The headline was “Unused resources for CHANGE: Fashion, history and sustainability”, and the question was why does history matter? Why do we need to talk about historical practices in the discussion around the environmental impact of textiles and clothing? asked Professor Ingun Grimstad Klepp, before she then went into how dress-practices from Norway and Sweden during the 100-year period spanning from 1780 till 1880, could offer clues to variety without excessive wastefulness. The red thread being that when we have less clothes, we take much better care of them and assign them high value.
This was followed by Ingrid Haugsrud speaking about “A closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear. Wardrobe planning in Norwegian weekly magazines 1908-2023”, where her analysis of three time-periods in the history of Norway’s oldest surviving women’s magazine which is KK (Kvinner og klær), that started out as Nordisk Mønstertidning. The three main themes that emerged for early 1900s, 1970s and 2020s were: Making do with what one had and at the same time creating variety, mix and match wardrobes (creating an illusion of having more than one actually does) and finally “the capsule wardrobe” and cleaning out/ridding oneself of unused things. The latter having led to a waste colonialism issue in the global south as an unforeseen problem.
Else Skjold led the panel, engaging both the physical and the digital audience.
After the two talks speakers were done, they were joined in a panel by Bjørn Sverre Hol Haugen, Marie Ulväng and Pernilla Rasmussen, monitored by Else Skjold. Here Marie Ulväng pointed out that in the 19th century, a household-budget for apparel was as much as 1/4th of the total. Which is a far cry from today’s share.
Later the same day, many of the participants joined others for a hands-on behind-the-scenes deep-diving into old wardrobes and textile know-how. Participants guessed what materials were hidden in jars based only on how they felt to touch, and also the weight of two garments, an old wool skirt which had belonged to Åse Roe from Tinn in Norway and a silk dress woven in the 1750s, with several reincarnations in the 1800 and 1900s.
Hands-on research: Is it silk, viscose or…?
The audience was also invited to talk about their own wardrobes and clothes with Ingun and Ingrid in what evolved as a deep-dive in a theme that was brought forward during the hybrid seminar: a need for a better language about our wardrobes and what makes them sustainable. Watch and listen to the hybrid webinar by clicking here
Engaged participants discussing with Ingun and Ingrid.
A new, limited-edition publication, edited by Kate Fletcher, Research Professor at SIFO, and Louise St. Pierre, Associate Professor at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, has been published, exploring design places, practices and senses – all in the context of how we relate to nature.
According to the book-blurb, Nature Relations (Occasional Press, 2023) explores light, sensory and vicarious experiences that deepen the relationship between design and nature. Its focus is a body of practices of design and nature that examine nature relations as a form of inquiry for designers and that build understanding and terminology along the way. It draws on some of the workings and findings of the Nature Relations Platform pilot project and its experiments around key themes of design and nature.
The publication is playful, colorful and easy to read – teasing out new way of seeing and understanding one’s surroundings and how to interact in a more meaningful way with nature. How we walk on the ground, how we talk to a tree, how we feel the elements – and thus how we can design better for those interfaces. The book opens up the field, without closing it down with examples of design-solutions, which could easily limit the reader’s understanding.
Demanding an open mind, alongside an expanded understanding of decentering, witnessing and embodied research, the publication is slightly mind-boggling. But offering visual candy in the form of fonts and electric colors, a sensory over-dose because of the paper-quality and a page-turning appeal based on surprises around each corner – a lot is packed into 70 pages.
The Nature Relations Platform project was a research project led by Louise St. Pierre and Kate Fletcher. Field researchers spent time in nature, and reported their findings in various modes such as audio recordings and sensory workshops.
The Team comprised: Field Researchers: Louise St. Pierre (Vancouver, Canada), Kate Fletcher (Macclesfield, UK), Caro McCaw (Dunedin, New Zealand), Zach Camozzi (Naniamo, Canada) Design, Development, and Workshop Creation: Melanie Camman, Giulia de Oliveira Borba, Yejin Eun, Eden Zinchik. The Nature Relations book is currently available in print as a limited edition.
We need to activate knowledge to unravel today’s environmental tangle, and we need to come together in these trying times. On Thursday November 9th, the SIFO Project CHANGE and the Norwegian Folk Museum will collaborate and will be visited by our talented Swedish and Danish colleagues. There will be an academic seminar (physical and digital) and later the same day a whole evening with a hands-on approach both to the museum’s archives and to research. In between the two, there will be opportunities for mingling, food and drink.
We need you to register, as there is limited space. If you want to take part in everything, you must register both for the seminar, the mingling and buy a ticket for the evening (two separate links). When registering for the academic seminar, you can also choose to have a link sent to you for digital participation.
Hybrid academic seminar:
Unused resources for CHANGE: Fashion, history and sustainability
14:30 – 14:45 CHANGE – why does history matter?
Why talk about historical practices in the discussion around the environmental impact of textiles and clothing?
Professor Ingun Grimstad Klepp Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) at OsloMet.
14:45 – 15:15 How did they do it? Variety in clothing without excessive wastefulness, Reflection on today’s environmental strategies inspired by dress practice in Norway and Sweden 1780-1880. Professor Ingun Grimstad Klepp Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) at OsloMet.
(Based on Variety in dress: Norwegian and Swedish clothing 1780-1880 Bjørn Sverre Hol Haugen, Marie Ulväng, Pernilla Rasmussen, Ingun Grimstad Klepp & Ingrid Haugsrud)
15:15 – 15:45 A closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear. Wardrobe planning in Norwegian weekly magazines 1908-2023
Ingrid Haugsrud Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) at OsloMet.
(Based on Towards a closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear: Wardrobe planning regimes in women’s weekly magazines 1908-2023. Ingrid Haugsrud, Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Vilde Haugrønning.)
15:45 – 16:00 Q&A
16:00 -18:00 Mingling and opportunity for physical attendees to buy refreshments (registration required).
Click here for participation in the academic hybrid conference, either physical or digital).
For participation in the evening event (6:00-8:30 PM) you need to buy a ticket directly from the Folk Museum (only physical participation possible). Click here for tickets.
“Will I have to change my sheep?” was the first question Piotr Kohut had asked when the Center for Regional Produce in Koniaków was asked to be a partner in the Woolum bilateral project financed by Norway grants. The respect for keeping the sheep happy prevailed, and the project has amazing results, including a high-hanging award that recognized this as a ‘project for the future’.
The change from the first time the Woolume-team visited Koniaków, was marked. The products were more varied and more professionally displayed, and the optimism for the future virtually popped out of the walls. “We now know that what we have here for sale, also the wool, is 100% from our sheep. It has been a struggle, but now we are confident that we can deliver on this,” said Maria Kohut, who has been a powerhouse in the project.
The Center for Regional Produce in Koniaków, where we ended the conference.
It was the Beskid mountains that was the setting for the end-seminar, and through the network of Norway-grant projects (including the Portuguese hiWool project and the Polish craft school from Zamek Cieszyn), the plus-factor of meeting across disciplines and projects was exponential. As an end-exercise for the seminar, the Norwegian partners arranged a workshop on knowledge-transfer and ways forward, which garnered enthusiasm and ideas for further projects and cooperation, also with countries that so far have not – in a wool context – been blessed with Norway grant funding. Slovakia being one and long-overdue.
There were more ‘hands-on’ workshops as well, related to the local lace-tradition that met us in every window in the small town, and even painted in large scale on house-walls. Maria Kohut’s take was to transfer this traditionally very delicate technique to wool and thus other applications.
The local lace traditions are very strong, and manifest themselves in local women producing lace, a local artist, Beata Legierska, who finds new and innovative ways of using lace in art and jewelry, and more.
When it came to applications, though, the whole work around fertilizing the soil with wool, using wool that has no use in other areas as mats and pellets for gardens, pots, city roofs, deserted open sores in the landscape from mining – the list seemed endless and so promising that any urban planner or someone trying to restore landscapes should be inspired. A visit to a local upstart company reinforced the impression: This area for development will be a major force in the future use of problematic wool that is currently burned, including shavings from skin and leather tanning.
Using wool for its best purposes rather than manipulating the market, the breeds or other things that compromise the well-being of the sheep was a recurring theme, and a major learning point from both earlier Norwegian wool projects and Woolume. The detailed testing from the Estonian-Norwegian bilateral project underpinned this (also under Norway grants), and there is now a comprehensive database to back this on all in all six sheep breeds. Much of the research in Woolume has also centered around the ‘best use’, so these two projects have major cross-pollination.
Wool pellets and wool that was used in experiments as fertilizer.
Revisiting the whole backdrop for the Woolume project, but also the local very dense and complicated history which in the past had delivered a rich cultural and economically viable industry that had made marks internationally, brings forward a lot of things to discuss in the light of EU’s textile strategy. The tapestry of history, economy and cultural elements that have shaped this for better or worse, is further described in Local, Slow and Sustainable Fashion: Wool as a Fabric for Change.
The proud Woolume team, from left Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Lisbeth Løvbak Berg, Katarzyna Kobiela-Mendrek, Monika Rom, Damian Chmura, Andrzej Gawlowski, Anna Salachna, Jan Broda, Ingvild Espelien and Maja Espelien. In front, from left Tone Skårdal Tobiasson and Maria Kohut.
With pride, Jan Broda who has led the project successfully for three years, told the conference that Woolume has been awarded a major Laureate prize, more specifically the Polish Smart Development Award in the category “Project of the Future”, from the Polish Intelligent Development Forum Foundation, Center for Intelligent Development. This is the reason cited for the prize: “for the achievements of the project, which may result in a positive impact on social and economic development. The award is granted for an open approach to promotion and communication with society, in order to present the importance of the benefits resulting from the implemented solution, and an attitude focused on actively maintaining a positive and interesting image of Polish science and research and development works.” Bravo!
